


if we were to fly to mars today (i'd hold your hand all the way)

by cursedhazel



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: Budding Relationship, Crushing, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gay, Humor, Implied ambi, Jealousy, Kippen Siblings, M/M, Mentioned Muffy, Pining, Post-Finale, Romance, Strangers to Lovers, Summer Romance, Tyrus - Freeform, developing crushes?, fluffy fluff fluff, yes i know i'm posting this in winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21984952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cursedhazel/pseuds/cursedhazel
Summary: "I didn't mean to scare you!" he says, crouching down to help Cyrus gather his things. Cyrus thinks his face is redder than any sunburn he could have gotten. "You were just one of the last people here, and you were just… sitting here all day. I got curious."Or, in which Cyrus Goodman finds himself at the pool more often than he'd like when the new lifeguard takes an interest in him. AU.
Relationships: Amber/Andi Mack, Buffy Driscoll/Marty, Cyrus Goodman & T. J. Kippen, Cyrus Goodman/T. J. Kippen
Comments: 11
Kudos: 174





	if we were to fly to mars today (i'd hold your hand all the way)

**Author's Note:**

> I know that Andi Mack ended months ago, but I recently discovered this in my Drive and decided to finish it! And after rewatching the finale recently, I got emotional and decided to post it. I hope you like it!
> 
> title inspired by the song Jane by Laundry Day

Was Cyrus being obnoxious laying out in his giant rubber ducky inner tube in a pool the size of three ping pong tables?

Yes.

Did he care?

Also yes, because seeing as he took up half the water, Buffy and Andi's incessant complaining started to get to him.

"I'd just prefer not to be wet right now," Cyrus says, pushing his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose to give his friends a Look. "I enjoy the motion of the water, but the sensation of being wet is not ideal at the moment."

Buffy bobs up and down in the water, arms folded across her polka-dotted bathing suit, scowling. "Cyrus, please," Buffy says, bumping the duck. "What's the point of coming to the pool if you won't, I don't know, get in?"

"Chilling. Tanning. The ambiance of listening to the splashing and voices gives me those ASMR tingles."

Andi's face falls into a pout, the ends of her damp hair dripping onto her shoulders. "You're ridiculous," she says, groaning before sinking down to her shoulders in the water. "Can you please come on? The duck is stupid."

Cyrus waves a dismissive hand at the two before he pushes his glasses back over his eyes, resting his hands at the bottom of his stomach. After a long sophomore year filled with nothing but standardized testing, Cyrus likes to think he deserved some rest and relaxation to his own accord, and if that was considered obnoxious, then obnoxious he shall be. His SPF 30 would hold him over for another half hour before he absolutely had to get out to reapply, and he thinks he already saw his watch tan evening out.

He stretches out between the wings of his duck, feeling calm as the rays of the sun keep him warm all over, evoking a sense of relaxation he hadn't felt ever. The waves of the pool rock him, and he feels like a small child in their mother's arms beginning to doze off into an after school nap.

The feeling of water enveloping his body erases the feeling, and he flails his arms like he was trying to grasp anything that wasn't water.

He hears two giggling voices as he breaks the surface, coughing and sputtering.

"I wish I had gotten that on video," Andi says, clutching her stomach as she keels over in laughter. Buffy can't even get a word out, she's laughing so hard. He can feel the steam coming out of his ears as he wipes the water from his eyes; they were lucky he didn't have anything important on him, or they would've really seen the wrath he lacked.

"It wasn't that funny, I definitely could have died," he says, furrowing his eyebrows. Buffy and Andi share a look before they continue giggling at Cyrus' expense. He splashes them with a bit of water.

"Come on, Cy," Buffy said, recovering from her fit of hysterics (though, her eyes shining with unshed tears lets him know she could resume at any at any second). "We just want to have fun with you."

"Well, call me when it doesn't involve my near-death."

Rolling her eyes, Andi slings an arm around Cyrus' shoulders and squeezes. "I'm sorry, Cyrus. We'll never do that again."

"Yeah," Buffy added, "But if we're going to the pool, I'd love if you paid attention to what's around you."

Despite everything in him wanting to stay angry, Cyrus can't help the smile growing on his face as he pushes back the hair slicked down to his forehead. "Fine. I'm sorry too. Just let me put the duck away."

He pushes the tube - which he secretly dubbed "Sir Quackington the Third" - out of the pool and climbs out after it, the concrete around the pool burning the bottoms of his feet as he drags the duck over to his beach chair.

As he opens the air valve, he can't help but hear a passing conversation between two girls his age, one with curly dark hair and the other he recognizes as Amber, a girl in which Andi had become particularly close with this past year. He notices Andi's eyes follow her from the pool, her chest heaving with a sigh he could almost hear from where he was. He smiles a bit to himself.

"My friends and I only ever come to the pool to see him," says the girl with dark hair to Amber, who rolled her eyes. "You're so lucky you get to see him every day."

"He's my brother," Amber says, fiddling with the tie of her yellow bikini bottoms. "I have to see him every day, and I'm literally his ride to and from work."

"Still lucky."

"I beg to differ."

The other girl doesn't seem to be listening as the girl at the lifeguard stand climbs down and walks past Cyrus towards the back room to his right, signaling the end of her shift.

Sir Quackington is almost completely deflated, and Cyrus is rolling him back into his box when a whistle blows and the entire pool falls quiet. He looks up.

Like slow-motion, a tall boy with dirty blonde hair and red board shorts emerges from the lifeguard room, and between his fingers dangles a pair of black sunglasses like the ones Cyrus had been wearing before he got flipped into the pool.

"Someone lost these, and they're way too nice to put in the lost and found," the boy announces as he scans the area. "If they're yours, please claim them now or forever hold your peace."

It was an entrance if Cyrus had ever seen one, and he had seen plenty - his own bar mitzvah hardly topped that. Every pair of eyes fell upon the lifeguard as he holds the glasses in his hands.

Cyrus feels around his pockets and searches his beach chair.

Those were his glasses.

"No one?" he says, tucking the glasses into the collar of his tank top. "Guess I'll keep them for now."

He walks to take his place on the throne of the pool, and Cyrus feels stuck as his duck flattens completely. When had he even lost his glasses? How did someone get a hold of them?

Why did the person currently holding them have to be so intimidating?

He means, Lifeguard Guy walked like he owned the place, with his chin tilted up and his thumbs tucked into his pockets - Cyrus walked like he was trying to disappear into a crowd even if he was alone. Lifeguard Guy nods his head at several teenage girls who all turn to giggle at their friends.

Cyrus felt little to no courage to get his glasses back.

He looks towards Andi and Buffy in the pool, and while Andi is busy talking to Amber (and grinning like an idiot), Buffy shrugs and nods towards Lifeguard Guy as if to say, "They're yours, go get them," and Cyrus shakes his head to say, "Absolutely not."

Buffy drifts towards the edge of the pool so she wouldn't have to shout over everyone to say, "If it's not you, it's gonna be someone else. Weren't those a birthday gift?"

"Yeah."

"And what would that relative say if they found out they got stolen?"

"Probably nothing. I see them maybe every three years. I'm good for another two."

Buffy tilts her head. "Cy."

He shoves the duck back into its box and puts it into his bag before zipping it shut. "I know, I know. But he's… scary."

Cyrus turns back to look, and LG sits cross-legged on the seat of the watch station, fiddling with the whistle around his neck, peering over his own pair of sunglasses. His heart skips a beat.

"Do you want me to go with you?" Buffy offers, resting her elbows on the edge of the pool. "Or I can retrieve them for you."

Cyrus shakes his head and stands, smoothing down his damp swim trunks with little sharks on them. He feels like an idiot, but seeing as he's already stood he couldn't sit back down without feeling more stupid.

"It's fine. I can do it."

"Good luck."

Without tripping over anything, Cyrus makes his way to the lifeguard station and waves to get LG's attention. The lifeguard looks down at Cyrus and takes off his shades.

And Lifeguard Guy was… kind of attractive.

Which only made Cyrus' mission ten times harder.

With green eyes peering down at him, Lifeguard Guy guy raises a dark eyebrow at Cyrus, who stands fiddling with his fingers at the bottom of the ladder.

"Yeah?" LG says, and even though he spoke not even five minutes ago, his voice is a lot deeper than Cyrus remembers it being. He feels a panic boil within him as his breathing goes a little funny trying to remember why he tried to strike up a conversation with Cute Lifeguard Guy.

"Um," Cyrus begins intelligently, "I think those are my… glasses. Sunglasses. That I lost. In the pool."

CLG's face lights up, which Cyrus would readily admit was the cutest thing ever, and he plucks Cyrus' glasses from his shirt. "Oh. Here."

There's no physical contact between the two as he hands them to him, but Cyrus' breath catches anyway. 

"I was secretly hoping no one would claim them because they're kinda cool."

Cyrus tucks the glasses into his pocket. Despite himself, Cyrus asks, "So you're just gonna trust me when I say they're mine? I could be lying for all you know."

A small smile finds the corners of CLG's eyes, and Cyrus completely understood the swoon the dark-haired girl felt.

"You have a sunglasses-shaped tan on your face."

Cyrus walks away with three things on his mind:

One: he'd have to learn to stop tanning with glasses on.

Two: he needed to work on his confidence.

And three: since when did Amber have a cute and semi-mysterious brother?

-

Cyrus managed to walk by the pool every day to see if he could catch Cute Lifeguard Guy again, and Buffy and Andi noticed almost immediately.

"I can ask Amber for you," Andi offers the dozenth time Cyrus insisted on taking a detour by their pool en route to The Spoon. "You're not very inconspicuous in your spying."

The tips of his ears turn red as he tears his eyes away. "I'm not spying."

"What happened to scary?" Buffy asks, waggling her eyebrows. "Did something change that?"

And well, nothing did change it - CLG's resting face was a sneer - but it intrigued Cyrus. Did he go to Grant? Why hadn't Cyrus seen him before? Did his green eyes always sparkle like that?

For some reason, Cyrus wanted to figure him out.

So he finds himself at the pool a week later, lounging on a beach chair with a book in hand, wearing the sunglasses that suddenly meant a lot more to him now. Kids splash around the pool, and he and their mothers lay underneath the shade of the umbrellas.

Cyrus checks his watch. It's 2:00.

(He's so compelled to call it "showtime," but that was creepy and objectifying.)

(Though he supposes that it was also creepy to have memorized the rotation schedule.)

Cyrus peers over the edge of his book and watches as Cute Lifeguard Guy makes his entrance, twirling his whistle by its lanyard. Cyrus pulls his knees up to his chest to cover the fact that he was kind of blushing.

He walks past him, and for a second, Cyrus swears he glances at him, but the moment is gone too soon for him to think anything of it. CLG takes his place at the silla de Lifeguard and stays there for the rest of his shift.

The sun makes its route around the sky and the occupancy of the pool lessens as the hours pass. Cyrus has made quite a dent in his book - a book about Greek Mythology because he'd never grown out of his Percy Jackson phase - and by the time he stops, it's nearing five o'clock. He checks his phone, but he doesn't have any notifications.

So in all, he'd call it a perfect day.

He's packing up his stuff when he hears footsteps behind him, but he doesn't turn around until he hears, "Hey, Sunglasses!" and then he immediately fumbles his bag and everything spills onto the ground.

It's the lifeguard.

"I didn't mean to scare you!" he says, crouching down to help Cyrus gather his things. Cyrus thinks his face is redder than any sunburn he could have gotten. "You were just one of the last people here, and you were just… sitting here all day. I got curious."

Their fingers brush as the lifeguard hands Cyrus his book, and Cyrus stares holes into the ground as he shoves it into his backpack. "Yeah. Sorry. I was... reading. And sorry for being so easily startled like one of those screaming goats."

The lifeguard chuckles and claps Cyrus on the back. It kind of hurt. "Nah man, it's my fault. I did sneak up on you."

Both boys stand, and Cyrus slings his bag over his shoulder. "It's alright."

The sun sets, turning the sky shades of orange, and it makes the boy's skin glow. It makes him look like some sort of angel, ethereal and unfairly beautiful - the kind of beautiful that makes them untouchable and only admirable from afar.

Which Cyrus had been doing for the past week.

It makes his stomach swirl being close to him for the first time since the sunglasses incident. He had the prettiest eyes he'd ever seen.

His phone buzzing in his pocket brings him back to reality. He fishes it out of his pocket; it's Andi, asking him where he was. Cyrus clears his throat loudly. "Uh, I have to go."

He walks around the lifeguard for the entrance but the hand on his arm stops him. Cyrus turns around.

"My name is TJ, by the way. I'll see you later?"

A slow smile spreads across Cyrus' face. "Yeah, definitely. And, uh, I'm Cyrus."

Smooth, Goodman. Very smooth.

-

From that day on, they kind of become friends.

It's more of a situational friendship than it is anything else - they only talked before or after TJ's shift if Andi and Buffy weren't around, or if TJ didn't have any other friends coming to visit him. He had a lot of those - the most prominent friend being the girl with curly dark hair, the one Cyrus had seen talking to Amber the first day he saw TJ. He later learned her name was Kira. She played basketball at one of Grant's rival schools. Buffy recognized the name as soon as it left Cyrus' mouth.

"He's friends with her?" Buffy asks, dipping her baby tater into a pit of ketchup with a look of disgust on her face. "She's such a bi-"

"Bitter person?" Cyrus offers, sending his friend a look. "Kind of. She always has this sneer on her face, like she's smelling something gross."

"Oh!" Andi says, wiping her hands with a napkin. "Now I know who you're talking about. She doesn't seem very nice."

"I think she has a crush on TJ."

"Then that probably says something about what kind of person TJ is," Buffy says. "Though, I didn't know she was capable of having feelings."

Kira's crush on TJ was as obvious as Cyrus was Jewish - very. She flirted with him on and off duty, twirling a piece of hair around her finger, and she always looked at Cyrus like he had a third eye.

TJ never really noticed that.

TJ never really noticed a lot of things outside of his lifeguarding duties - he didn't notice Kira's incessant flirting or any other girl trying to get his attention by breaking pool rules. Kira was a pretty girl - he didn't notice that she wanted to be seen as more than one of the guys.

TJ did, however, notice Cyrus, for some reason.

"You wouldn't happen to be busy in like, half an hour, right?" TJ says to the brown-eyed boy one late afternoon a few weeks after their initial encounter. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his board shorts. "Because I'm kinda hungry and would like it if you came with."

Cyrus may have agreed too quickly, but TJ smiles. He had such a nice smile.

"Cool. Meet me at The Spoon."

Cyrus is there five minutes early, glancing at the door every time the bell rang. Why was he so nervous? He means, he'd never seen him outside the fenced-off gates of his community pool - what if he was different in the real world?

He'd almost bitten all his nails off by the time TJ walks through the doors, wearing a pair of cargo shorts and a t-shirt. Cyrus makes eye contact with him and waved him over.

"Hey," Cyrus says, fiddling with the wrapper of his straw. "Long time, no see."

TJ rolls his eyes and slides into the seat across from him. "Oh, I know. It's been ages."

They talk for a bit, and when the waitress comes, they order a basket of baby taters, one chocolate, and one vanilla milkshake.

"Vanilla?" Cyrus asks. "That's the most boring flavor."

"Like chocolate is any better."

"Take that back!"

A conversation like this continues, and soon, it comes easy. Cyrus learned that TJ had gone to a private school on a basketball scholarship across town, but would be transferring to Grant in the fall because of reasons Cyrus didn't dare push him to specify. He learned that TJ's favorite food was muffins ("That's the first time I've ever heard anybody say that." "Well, I'm not just anybody, Cyrus."). He also found out that TJ's favorite goddess was Athena because of her quote-unquote, " _badassery_ ," and that his favorite books were the Percy Jackson series because he really related to Percy's character.

"How so?" Cyrus asks, slurping the last of his milkshake. TJ popped the last baby tater in his mouth. "I always thought Grover was the best character."

TJ shakes his head. "It's so like you to root for the underdog."

"Underdog is my middle name."

TJ laughs a little at that, and Cyrus is extremely pleased with himself. TJ had a cute laugh. "Alright, _Underdog_. But I guess I always related to Percy because everyone thought he was the big bad kid when in reality, he was just trying to protect who he loved and was always caught in the wrong place at the wrong time." He goes quiet for a moment, eyes scouring the table, and Cyrus waits for him to continue. "And like, he had dyslexia, so I could really relate to the "words swimming off the page thing. I have the same thing with numbers."

Cyrus didn't expect TJ to open up as quickly as he had, especially in the middle of a busy diner, but it was out there now. Cyrus' heartbeat abnormally fast as he considers his words.

TJ looks up at Cyrus expectantly, all puppy-dog eyed, and the corner of Cyrus's mouth turns up. In a moment of boldness, he places his hand over TJ's. "That's why representation is important," he says. They search each other's eyes for a moment, and Cyrus pulls his hand away, hoping TJ didn't notice how sweaty it had gotten. "It lets you know you're okay and that you're not alone."

A look passes over TJ's face but it's gone before Cyrus can recognize it.

"Yeah. It does."

-

An amount of time passes, and it's not unlikely to see Cyrus at the pool at least twice a week. He'd gotten visibly tanner - he could probably wear yellow or white without looking washed out now - and he hadn't gone a day this past month without wearing his "lucky" sunglasses.

"You and Teej seem pretty close now," Andi says, bumping Cyrus with her elbow. "What's up with that?"

Cyrus twitches his shoulders and continues flipping through one of Andi's art catalogs, pretending to be interested in yarn sales - he didn't know they did BOGOs on string. The green color was pretty.

"That's not an answer, Cy." Andi pulls down Cyrus' hands, and he looks at her through his shades. "You're wearing your glasses inside. Like a d-bag."

Cyrus' drops the book onto Andi's bed and pushes his glasses into his hair. "Really? I was kinda afraid of that."

Andi purses her lips. "I mean, yeah. Does it have anything to do with _Cute Lifeguard Guy?_ "

Cyrus groans and rolls onto his back, folding his hands over his stomach. The blowing of the ceiling fan cools his burning face.

"Maybe."

"Do you think you like him?"

"Maybe."

Andi looks down at her dejected friend in pity. "Do you think there's a chance?"

Cyrus glances back at Andi and sighs, running his fingers through his hair. "He's probably straight. He's only ever surrounded by his adoring fangirls."

"And yet, who does he spend most of his time with?"

It only makes Cyrus feel worse - he was getting his hopes up about something that may have not even been there, and he would ruin a perfectly good friendship because of a little… crush.

"I just like being his friend. That's all we are."

But then it was moments like the one at The Spoon, and their one-on-one conversations during TJ's breaks about which Doritos flavor was the best that made him feel like there was no one else - no Kira, nobody.

That's what hurt him the most, and he always felt so guilty for taking something completely platonic and twisting it into something way more than it was.

So despite what his four shrink parents told him, he shoved it down.

-

There were days like today that made that hard.

Cyrus and TJ exchanged numbers a few days ago, and since then, not an hour had passed without a text exchange. Cyrus couldn't even tell you what they were talking about. It was so full of nonsense that filled Cyrus with a joy he hadn't felt in a while.

_TJ: you wanna go to the grocery store w/ me?_

Cyrus stared at his phone, blinking for a second before a tiny smile twitches on his mouth. 

_Cyrus: sure :)_

_TJ: cool i'll pick you up in 10_

After some mild persuasion and a promise for an extra pool key (because swimming at night was always better, especially with her girlfriend), Amber let TJ borrow her car for the evening, which he explains to Cyrus as he slides into the passenger seat.

"How nice of her," Cyrus says, buckling his seatbelt. "Why do you need to go grocery shopping?"

TJ pulls the car into reverse, and his hand slides behind Cyrus' headrest, his other hand on the wheel as he cranes his neck to look out his back window.

He had a nice jawline.

"I don't."

Ignoring the blush on his face - which meant nothing, alright - Cyrus pouts as TJ turns out of his driveway. "Then why are we going to the grocery store?"

"Because it's fun, and I have fun with you."

Cyrus chuckles, picking at the skin around his nail bed.

Shoving it down was way harder than he thought.

It didn't help that TJ looked great in everything he wore - he could show up with a potato sack on his head, and Cyrus would think he was the most adorable thing ever. Today, he decided on a plain blue t-shirt and a pair of jeans. His hair was perfectly soft and fluffy. His skin was evenly tanned, he smelled like he'd just taken a shower.

Cyrus wanted to find something wrong with him so badly, but he couldn't.

All his quirks were things that made TJ, well, TJ, and Cyrus _liked_ TJ. He liked him, maybe in more ways than one, and there was nothing he could do about it except ignore it and hope it went away.

It's almost nine by the time the two pull into the Wal-Mart parking lot, and Cyrus is about to open his door when TJ grabs his arm to stop him. His eyes dart to TJ.

"What are you doing?"

"I got it. Don't open your door," TJ says, opening and stepping out of the one on his side and jogging around the front of the car to open Cyrus'. "I'm a gentleman, after all."

TJ offers his hand, which Cyrus takes, and he helps him out of the car in the cheesiest way possible.

"Thank you, kind sir," Cyrus says, hoping his palms weren't as sweaty as he thought they were.

TJ bows his head, and Cyrus rolls his eyes as a giggle escapes his mouth. He almost tries pulling his hand away when the blonde glances up at the boy before him.

He's not gonna lie and say he didn't feel like Cinderella meeting her prince charming, because he totally did if it meant a parking lot was their ballroom, and he'd lose a Croc instead of a glass slipper. TJ's eyes sparkle if not for a moment, and Cyrus' heart jumps to his throat as TJ brings Cyrus' fingers to his lips.

_Was he melting? He thinks he's melting. He's a puddle on the ground. Oh look, a kid's stepped in him_.

"My pleasure," TJ says, straightening. He winks to seal the deal - yes, the deal in which Cyrus was absolutely done for - and he drops Cyrus' hands like nothing ever happened. He starts walking, and Cyrus can't do anything but follow.

He's not gonna wash his hand ever again.

-

Grocery shopping with TJ was fun after the whole car thing.

The two boys walked side by side, pushing the cart together as TJ threw in anything loaded with carbs and sugar, and Cyrus tossed out half of it because he was very concerned for the boy's health.

"How do you eat so much junk and stay so fit?" Cyrus asks as TJ puts another box of cookies in the cart. "Someone with even a slightly slower metabolism could breathe the fumes of our shopping cart and gain two pounds."

TJ shrugs, his shoulder brushing Cyrus'. "I don't know. I work out so much it cancels out. PEMDAS, or something like that."

"That's not what PEMDAS is."

"I honestly wouldn't know."

It's almost ten now, the aisles are empty, and it feels like they have the entire store to themselves. They talk. Cyrus would make a comment at TJ, and TJ would shove Cyrus' arm as his eyes crinkled in the corners - it quickly became Cyrus' favorite thing to do. They talk some more. They decide that Cool Ranch is the best flavor Doritos, and that strawberry was the worst ice cream flavor, and that Golden Oreos were superior to regular.

"But chocolate chocolate chip muffins are the best kind of muffin," TJ suggests as they meander towards the self-checkout with an astounding amount of junk in their basket. "We can agree on that too."

Cyrus squints, passing a bag of chips over the barcode scanner. "Um, I'm quite partial to a good banana nut."

TJ puts a bag in the cart, scoffing. "Banana nut is the worst."

"I beg to differ."

"Then beg."

Cyrus pauses his scanning and turns to glare at TJ. "Excuse me?"

TJ smirks, and it's enough to start the flapping in Cyrus' stomach again.

"You heard me."

Cyrus strikes the toothpaste across the scanner (because at this rate, TJ would need as much cavity protection as possible). "No, I don't think I did."

"You really like _banana nut_? Are you a psychopath?"

Cyrus spares TJ another glance and almost laughs about how exasperated he looks. It's adorable.

"I'm around my four shrink parents enough to know what makes a person a psychopath, and liking a certain type of muffin over another is not a qualifier."

A beep for the Cosmic Brownies. TJ puts the bag in the cart.

"You're such a smartass."

"And you're stubborn."

That was the last item, and as Cyrus selects the payment option, TJ bores holes into the side of Cyrus' head.

"You can be annoying."

"And you can be intimidating."

Finally, Cyrus makes full eye contact with TJ, and under the fluorescent lights of a late-night trip to Wal-Mart, ignoring the computerized voice thanking them for shopping, Cyrus doesn't think the boy has ever looked more beautiful.

TJ's eyes scan Cyrus' face, and for a second they fall on his lips. He meets his eyes once again.

"You know what else you are?" TJ says.

"What?"

Their faces are only inches apart. Cyrus can smell the mint on his breath.

"You're the only person I can talk to like this."

-

"You're absolutely smitten," Buffy says as she sifts through one of the many magazines in Cloud 10's lobby. Andi had dragged the two back to her mom's store as Bex experimented hairstyles on her. Buffy and Cyrus had painted each other's nails while they were waiting, and as they waited for them to dry, they struck up a conversation.

"I am not. I only like him a little bit."

Buffy rolls her eyes over her magazine, sighing. "Please, Cy. You've talked about this boy every day for the past few weeks; if you're not with me or Andi, you're hanging out with him."

Cyrus blows on his purple nail polish, avoiding making eye contact. It was a pretty, sparkly shade of violet, and though his nails were kinda short and stubby, they made his hands looks nice. Buffy clicks her tongue.

"I take your silence for a "Yes, Buffy, you're right as always.""

Cyrus reddens. "I don't know, Buff. We're just friends."

"And friends help each other out of cars and kiss each other's hands."

"Some might."

Buffy purses her lips. "In what universe?"

"This one?"

Buffy puts the magazine in her lap, smothering Emma Stone's sultry stare. "Marty and I don't even do that, and we've been dating for two years."

Cyrus knew what she was saying was true - friends didn't do that. Friends didn't stare into each other's eyes like that. They didn't jump at any sort of sudden contact. They didn't secretly want the other to like them the same way back.

"But I'm gay."

"Meaning?" Buffy asks, folding her hands.

"Meaning… TJ probably isn't. And I'm pining after a straight boy. Which goes nowhere 98% of the time."

Finally, Buffy's face softens, and she looks a Cyrus with a sad look in her eyes.

"You don't know what TJ's sexuality is, and you can't assume that for someone."

Rubbing the back of his neck, Cyrus says, "I know. But thinking otherwise will get me hoping, and hoping brings heartache. Plus, he's hanging with girls all the time. One of them could be his girlfriend for all I know."

That shows when Cyrus is at the pool once again, dangling his toes into the water as he watches TJ attract young women like moths to a cute flame. A group of three hang around his stand, batting their eyelashes and touching him with their lingering hands.

They were all really pretty.

Especially Kira, the presumably mean one. She was definitely the boldest of the bunch; her fingers rubbed at TJ's shoulder, tugged at his lanyard, played with pieces of his hair. TJ entertained all of it, of course; he was a flirt by nature, a charmer and a people pleaser, and Cyrus knew it. TJ sends her one of his award-winning grins, and Cyrus can tell from here how viciously he's flirting back.

And Cyrus' blood boils with jealousy.

He would never in a million years express that to TJ; all he ever wanted to do was make the boy happy. But as Kira ran her hand over his bicep, still twirling that piece of hair around her finger, Cyrus didn't know if he could stand it any longer. He always tried his best to stay positive and be happy for people, but he was jealous by nature, unfortunate as it was.

TJ leans in to whisper something in Kira's ear, his hand resting on her shoulder.

Cyrus gathered his things and left.

He didn't leave to go home - if he went home, he would probably throw himself face down onto his pillow and cry himself to sleep over a guy hardly even worth it.

But he had to go somewhere.

So he finds himself in the park, sitting on an abandoned swing on a swing set, in a pair of swim trunks decorated with little stegosauruses, swinging solemnly as the sun began to set.

Maybe he was a bit of a coward for leaving. TJ had no obligations to him, no sort of promise or attachment that would keep him from doing whatever he pleased with whomever he liked. Cyrus couldn't stop him from being happy.

But he didn't have to sit there and watch as his heart broke.

For only a second, Cyrus considered the thought of them being more than just friends. He'd wanted to hold his hand, to cuddle with him, to kiss him. But he knew it was wrong to feel that way for a presumably straight boy.

He's close to tears when he hears footsteps crunching in the wood chips of the playground, and without even looking he could guess who it was.

"Why are you here?" Cyrus asks, his feet dragging across the dirt. "Don't you have, like, a pool to be watching?"

The shuffling stops and is followed by a deep breath. The boy gulps behind him. "Yeah, but I had Iris take over for a bit."

Cyrus runs his tongue over his teeth. "How did you know I'd be here?"

TJ appears next to Cyrus but he stares straight ahead, hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts.

"I… I texted Amber, who asked Andi, and she told me that you'd either be here or your house. Here was closer than your house."

Cyrus' inwardly scolded his heart for pounding as he glances up at the taller boy. TJ looks down at him.

"Can I sit?" he asks. Cyrus nods his head. TJ lowers himself onto the low hanging swing. The set creaks.

It's silent for several moments as they both tried to think of what to say. A cricket chirps nearby. The leaves shake in the wind. The sun dips below the horizon.

"Why are you here?"

Cyrus kicks his feet forward as he awaits the answer. A furrow runs through TJ's brow line. "I saw you leave upset."

"And why would you chase after me? You left all your adoring fans unentertained."

TJ looks bemused, pulling a face at Cyrus. "What are you talking about?"

"Your girls. Kira. I'm sure they were upset."

"What is this about, Cy? What are you getting at?"

Cyrus takes a deep breath and picks his head up to look at the boy sitting next to him. The set creaks again.

"Nothing," he says. "Forget I said anything. I'm alright."

That was a lie, and judging by TJ's face, he knew it too. He could always see right through him. Cyrus chewed on his bottom lip and kicked at the ground again.

"Are you jealous?"

Cyrus whips his head around, his eyebrows shooting into his hairline.

"What? No, I'm not-"

"Then why would you even bring up Kira? I didn't even know you knew who she was."

Cyrus scoffs and kicks the ground so hard his shoe flies off, but he just watches it go. Was he really that obvious? He'd always known he wore his heart on his sleeve, but he thought his shirt had been red enough.

"She was one of Buffy's basketball rivals."

TJ slowly nods his head, his hands gripping the rusty metal chains of the swing set.

"Oh." He sighs, running his finger across the back of his hand. "We… we used to have a thing back in eighth grade, but we didn't work out. Something didn't feel right with it. We're still friends, but I'd never… do that again."

"Would you mind me asking why?"

TJ shrugs. "I just… don't like girls."

And Cyrus almost chokes on his saliva but manages to hold it together while TJ turns red staring into his lap. A few moments of silence pass.

"I… I didn't know that."

The boy shrugs again, his eyes unmoving from their fixation. "Not a lot of people do. I'm not exactly open about it."

Cyrus takes a shaky breath and picks at his flaking nail polish. TJ steals a glance at Cyrus.

"I don't like girls either," Cyrus says. "But I've been out about that since middle school."

"I never knew that. I thought you and Buffy might have been a thing."

Cyrus chuckles. "In no universe ever."

They hold eye contact for a few seconds before they both look away. His stomach swirls again.

"TJ stands for Thelonious Jagger," TJ confesses, spitting it out so quickly he trips on his words. "My parents were huge music nerds. Nobody outside of my family knows that."

Cyrus struggles not to gasp as a big grin broke out across his face, and he pokes TJ with his toe.

"I always thought it was something like Tyler or Theodore, but I would have never suspected Thelonious. That's so cool!" His expression smooths for a second. "Why did you tell me?"

The sun casts an orange across the blonde boy's face, and Cyrus is taken back to the day they met at the pool almost a month and a half ago. His green eyes catch the light in a way that makes them glow. It made him look ethereal.

"Because I trust you. And I want you to trust me. None of those girls - not even Kira - know that."

Cyrus doesn't think shoving it down would help when his feelings were oozing out of every one of his orifices.

"Of course I trust you, Teej."

-

"What have you done to my brother?" Amber asks as she approaches Cyrus with his order at The Spoon. She slides his milkshake to him. "He's hardly at home anymore, and when I do see him he's all giggly. Did you drug him?"

Cyrus takes a long sip, the tips of his ears burning red. He and TJ were connected at the hip at this point - they did everything together, from hanging out at the park to going shopping. He'd even invited him to his house, and TJ met his mom. She loved him, to Cyrus' relief, because he didn't know what he would have done if she hadn't.

"No, I didn't drug him. We've just been hanging out a lot."

Amber squints her eyes as she pulls a napkin from her apron and tosses it in his direction. Cyrus dabs the corner of his mouth. "Well, keep doing it. I haven't seen him this happy in a long time."

One day, while in Cyrus' room, the two sit next to each other on the bed as Cyrus demonstrates to him how to fold a paper crane. TJ's paper looks more like a crumpled ball of paper than it does a bird, but Cyrus finds his attempt adorable.

"I think you folded wrong here," Cyrus says, grabbing the piece of paper in TJ's lap. He unfolds what he'd previously done. "After this, you have to fold diagonally, not horizontally."

TJ pouts and leans against the headboard. "I always sucked at geometry."

Cyrus reassures him and gives him a new piece of paper, going slowly with the steps as TJ followed along with watchful eyes. At one point, Cyrus grabs TJ's hands to show him the motion of folding, which is awkward at first, but as TJ keeps asking him how to do the fold again, the more comfortable he feels showing him.

"There you go," Cyrus says, beholding TJ's paper that only slightly resembled a bird. "It's beautiful."

"You did most of it," TJ whines, leaning into Cyrus' shoulder. "That's the only reason it turned out well."

Cyrus cocked his head. ""Well" is an overstatement."

They fold cranes until there's at least a dozen laid out between Cyrus' bedsheets. Their legs are pressed against one another. TJ looks at him puzzled. "What are these for?"

"I like to decorate with them. Yours certainly have more… character than the rest."

They spend at least an hour tying string around the cranes, suspending them from his curtain rod and on his (broken) ceiling fan, laying them on his dresser and setting a final one on top of an old textbook on his desk. They vary in color, from blue to red to yellow, and Cyrus is satisfied; no two cranes looked exactly the same.

Cyrus, who'd been admiring his room with hands on his hips in the center of the room, turns back towards his bed where TJ is sitting with half-lidded eyes, his head propped up by one fist as his elbow digs into his knee.

"It's adorable how proud you are," he says, fighting back a yawn. "But all this folding has made me tired."

Cyrus softens at TJ's slow blinks, and he wiggled into his bed next to him. A sleepy smile crosses TJ's face, and he sits up next to Cyrus.

"You can go to sleep if you want. Or go home. I don't mind." He nudges the boy with his elbow. "I had fun anyway."

TJ mumbles something that sounds like a "me too" before his eyes are closing, and his head falls on Cyrus' shoulder.

He's snoring within a minute.

Cyrus wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls a blanket over their legs.

He smells like chlorine.

-

"Please, Teej!" she beckons, grabbing his shoulder so hard her nails dug into his shirt. "The pacing is making me nervous."

TJ stops but he's not any less tense as he turns to meet Amber's inquiring gaze. He runs his hand through his hair for the dozenth time. "Sorry. I'm just…. well, that. Nervous."

Amber rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I can tell."

TJ tries to move past her, but she puts both hands on his shoulders to stop him; she's not strong enough to push him hard enough to fall, so she's a bit startled when he stumbles a little.

"Dude, what's wrong? Is it Cyrus?"

TJ lets out a staggered breath, brushing an invisible piece of dust off his sleeve. "Perhaps."

And by "Perhaps," he meant, "yes, this is 100% about Cyrus." He's been at his anxious pacing for close to 15 minutes now, and with the thought at the forefront of his mind, he couldn't do anything else.

"What happened?"

His knees feel weak, arms feel heavy, and though there was a lack of his mother's spaghetti vomited on his sweater, he felt like there could be at any second.

"I kind of told him how I feel."

Amber's eyes go wide, and her hands slack against TJ's chest. Amber knew how TJ and Cyrus felt about each other before they even knew how they felt about each other. She'd notice his sudden change in mood since the boy came into his life; she was the same when she had met Andi. TJ, who only did work or school or basketball, never came home anymore, and it was a good thing for once.

He told her that he liked a boy, and that his name was Cyrus Goodman, and she couldn't have been happier for her little brother.

"Are you serious?"

TJ hesitates for a second, before scrunching his nose. "Again, kind of."

"Meaning…"

"Meaning, I wrote a note to him on a piece of origami paper after he fell asleep and folded it into a paper crane that I stuck on his bookshelf before I left."

It was both the sweetest and most disastrous thing Amber had ever heard in her life.

"When he was sleeping?"

TJ rubs the back of his neck with a small smile. "I had fallen asleep first, but when I woke up, he was asleep with his arm around my shoulder, and he was just so cute I had to say something."

Amber simply shakes her head, amused at the antics of young teenage love and the stupidity of 16-year-old boys.

Cyrus found the crane the next day when he cleans his shelf. The bird is a blue one, like many of the others, but there's writing on the inside of the wing that prompts a five-second debate on whether to unfold it.

Ultimately, he does.

It's a letter of some sort; a note written in scratchy red ink, roughly a page long, and at the end, there's a heart with Theo Kippen beside it.

It reads:

_Dear Cyrus AKA Underdog AKA Banana Nut AKA Sunglasses or whatever other nicknames we've come up with over the month and a half of my knowing you,_

_At the time of writing this, you're currently asleep as I lay in your arms, half awake and feeling some sort of giddy I haven't felt… ever. You're so cute when you're sleeping; the only bad thing is that I can't see your big brown eyes when they're closed. Is that cheesy? Probably, but Cheesy is also my middle name._

_Where was I?_

_Oh, right. Well, um, to be frank, I think I like you. I mean, I know I like you, actually, but I didn't want to come off too strong. It might be too late for that. I don't know._

_I've never felt like this before. Is it love? I'm not sure, but it could be someday, because you've made me happier than I've ever been. I would pay to see you smile. I can trust you, and I know you trust me too, and that connection is something extremely rare for me._

_I could potentially love you, Cy._

_But for now, I really really like like you. A lot. And now you're stirring which means I have to stop now but…_

_If you find this, I somehow found the guts to leave it with you._

_I hope you feel the same, but if you don't, that's alright. <3 Theo Kippen_

He's frozen for a good ten minutes before he can even begin to process what he had read.

The boy he liked liked him back.

He didn't know that was possible, but here it was. Physical proof.

He wants to frame it.

_Cyrus: meet me at the spoon when you get off_

He doesn't respond, but Cyrus only hopes he received it.

-

Everything comes full circle.

Cyrus realizes this as he sits waiting at The Spoon in the same booth the day his crush on TJ began. He orders a basket of baby taters, one chocolate and one vanilla milkshake (though, the vanilla one for himself; it's not as bad as Cyrus previously judged it to be, but he still would rather his own chocolate.) He was wearing the same shirt, glasses tucked into the shirt pocket. His heart beats just as quickly as it did

He checks his watch; ten minutes had gone by. He stares at the door waiting for that familiar bell to ring, the sight of his smiling face.

It never comes.

A billion possibilities run through Cyrus' head: what if he was kidnapped? What if the letter was a prank? What if he changed his mind? Most likely, TJ just probably didn't see the text, but his shift should've ended at least half an hour ago. Amber wasn't working today, so he couldn't ask her.

What if Cyrus was just deluding himself?

The people in the restaurant give him pity looks as his waitress comes by for the fourth time, this time with a bill and a frown. She hadn't charged him for the chocolate milkshake, but it doesn't make Cyrus feel any better. 

He leaves a ten on the table. He waits two more minutes, just to hear that bell, to see his favorite boy come rushing in with an apology Cyrus would immediately accept.

It doesn't happen.

Cyrus dumps the chocolate milkshake in the trash and leaves.

He wouldn't lie and say he wasn't crushed, because he was; his heart hurt, his head was pounding from holding back tears. He jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans, toeing a pebble in the sidewalk crack. His head hangs low.

He's walked almost a block and a half when he hears footsteps behind him, but he doesn't turn around till he hears, "Hey, Cyrus!" in which he spins on his heels to face not only TJ, but the brown paper bag in his hand.

"TJ."

His face is a little red, and he's short of breath, but he smiles at Cyrus nonetheless before thrusting the bag towards him.

"This is for you."

Cyrus looks at TJ with an eyebrow raised before he opens the bag. He looks inside. "Is this… a banana nut muffin?"

TJ nods his head, and his face is a lot redder than it was before. "Yeah. Amber helped me make them, because I’m kind of a lost cause in the kitchen. That came from my third batch; the other two burned, and that's the best one from the last attempt, which made me late for meeting you at The Spoon, and I would have texted you telling you I'd be late, but my phone was dead, and I couldn't find my charger, and so I asked Amber to borrow her phone or charger, but she didn't have your number and her phone was almost dead too, so she texted Andi for your number, but she never responded, so by the time I showed at The Spoon, you weren't there, so I asked one of the waitresses if they'd seen you, and they said you just left and-"

"Now we're here," Cyrus finishes, all traces of disappointment gone and instead replaced by this warm light that coursed through his veins like some kind of drug, and Cyrus was feeling the high.

"And now we're here," TJ agrees, finally breathing. The expression on his face shifts. "I'm sorry that it looked like I stood you up, but that wasn't my intention."

Cyrus shrugs. "I know that now. I forgive you."

"Cool." TJ looks between Cyrus's eyes before he glances to the ground. "So, I'm assuming you found the note."

"I did."

"I didn't think you would have found it so quickly."

"I pride myself on my attention to detail."

A dimple appears in TJ's cheek. "I see that." 

A car drives by, and it's then do they both realize they're still outside, in public, under the privacy of nothing but the sun's light. To his left is a small record store. Cyrus gestures for them to head inside.

The deflation of relief in TJ was evident. 

Inside is warm and brown and cozy, with a few shelves of old records and various couches of different eras spotted around the space. Nobody's in - the employees were probably in the backroom. The boys head for a soft mahogany bench in the back corner of the shop.

They face each other.

"So… what does this mean?" TJ says. 

Again, Cyrus shrugs. He didn't know anything, apparently. All that he knew was that the boy he liked liked him too.

Was there anything else he needed?

"I don't know," Cyrus says. "What do you wanna know?"

"How you feel?"

Their gaze holds for a long time, and this time, neither look away. When one does, it's TJ, and he looks down at how their hands are mere centimeters apart. He looks back up to Cyrus.

Without another moment to think, Cyrus presses a kiss to TJ's cheek.

"I really really like like you too, TJ."

They leave the store. In one hand, Cyrus holds his muffin. In the other, he holds the hand of the boy he could potentially love someday.

Maybe pools weren't as bad as he thought.


End file.
